FORT SMITH, Ark. (AP) - A year ago, fundraising for the planned 50,260-square-foot, museum was at $6.7 million. Since, the local arm of the fundraising push has wound up, the statewide fundraising campaign is gearing up, and the fundraisers have $10.2 million in hand and more in the process, President and Chief Executive Officer Jim Dunn said Wednesday. Dunn had just returned from a promotional trip to Little Rock and El Dorado.

Museum officials do not count funds as secured until they have them in hand. As of the June 30 end of the 2012 fiscal year, pledges receivable totaled $2.13 million, according to a preliminary audit report to the Finance Committee on Dec. 11. Many such gifts are given over time, such as a $500,000 pledge made last year and payable at $100,000 a year.

His job involves a lot of travel, Dunn noted. Last week's trip was a good one. He returned from Little Rock with a $250,000 pledge from Pat Norsworthy, Dunn said. Big donors are offered naming opportunities within the museum, and Norsworthy's will be the Old West exhibit, Dunn noted.

Norsworthy is a farmer who wished to honor his grandfather, Pat Henderson, the U.S. marshal for the Eastern District of Arkansas in the 1960s. Henderson, Dunn said, was an outstanding person and successful businessman and farmer, and he had a wonderful relationship with his grandson.

This donation is made in conjunction with the statewide fundraising campaign, the second portion of the planned three-part fundraising effort for the museum. Dunn told the Southwest Times Record (http://is.gd/liuA4b) that museum officials and the private nonprofit Museum Foundation hope to begin the national fundraising campaign in the first quarter of next year, subject to the approval of the Museum Board of Directors. The 23-member board meets next in March 2013.

Beginning a new campaign does not signal the end of the previous campaigns. For example, the local fundraising campaign will never be completely over, but the fundraisers' primary focus will be on the state and national levels, "as this is a national museum, and we're looking at seeking national gifts," Dunn said.

The No. 1 issue the fundraisers have bumped into is the perception of the museum as a Fort Smith project, despite its being a national museum designed by national architects, Dunn said.

To help boost the museum's national profile, the board put even greater focus on attracting board members of national stature. The newer members include John Clark, former Marshals Service director who helped choose the Fort Smith site for the museum, now Lockheed Martin director of security operations, information systems and global solutions; Xernona Clayton of Atlanta, Trumpet Awards Foundation president and CEO, and wife of U.S. Judge Paul Brady who donated his great uncle Bass Reeves' gun and badge to the museum; John Hawkins of Hawkins International of Tulsa; Mary Alice McAlester of McAlester, Okla., whose great great grandfather J.J. McAlester founded the town named for him, was a U.S. Marshal for Indian Territory and second lieutenant governor of Oklahoma; Jim Reilly of Colorado Springs, former astronaut now associate vice president and dean of science and technology development for American Public University System; and Edwin Marshall, chief of staff for the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and board representative of the Five Civilized Tribes.

Although including board members from outside Arkansas is part of the transition, the board continues to have strong local members, Dunn said.

People in the Fort Smith area rightfully associate the marshals with Fort Smith's frontier history, but there is so much more to the marshals, said Dunn who grew up in Booneville or, as he states, alluding to Hanging Judge Isaac Parker, "in the shadow of the gallows" and should have known more about the marshals.

"Now I get to visit people's offices and tell them about the marshals' contributions in the Civil War, to Civil Rights, current law enforcement, 9/11, Katrina, the Going Snake Massacre, and people sit there and say 'Wow!' Our goal now is to get that to convert to gifts to the museum," Dunn said.

The prospect of breaking ground 1 1/2 years from now would be an aggressive goal, he said. Although museum officials will strive for construction groundbreaking in 2014, they cannot promise it at this time, Dunn said.

He said he'll be analyzing donations received, the quality of pledges promised and over what time frame, and will factor in anticipated revenues from the New Market Tax Credits and the planned commemorative Marshals Service coin. The first $5 million in revenue from the U.S. Treasury's sale of the coins would go to the museum project. The coin is expected to be minted in January 2015. It will commemorate the 225th anniversary of the Marshals Service.

The Marshals Service is the nation's oldest law enforcement agency. President George Washington established in on Sept. 24, 1789, when he signed the Judiciary Act into law. President Barack Obama signed the coin legislation into law on April 2.

Those revenues might mean that instead of $50 million, the museum fundraisers may actually need to raise perhaps $36 million toward construction. If that turns out to be the case, the fundraising task would be lightened, Dunn said.

One arm of the planned, environmentally friendly, star-shaped building will tower eight stories high over the Arkansas River, pointing West toward Oklahoma/Indian Territory. Designed by Cambridge Seven Associates of Cambridge, Mass., and Polk Stanley Rowland Curzon Porter Architects of Little Rock, the museum will feature three main galleries - Frontier Marshals, A Changing Nation and Marshals Today.

The concept for the 20,000-square-foot exhibit space was designed by Christopher Chadbourne and Associates. Plans include cafe and event space, classrooms, a sloped-floor theater, a river-facing terrace and a Hall of Honor that will include a reflecting pool in which light will reflect from star cutouts representing the more than 200 marshals and deputy marshals killed in the line of duty.

Although the museum does not yet have a bricks-and-mortar presence, it does have a strong educational component of which museum officials are proud. That educational component will continue, Dunn said.

The innovative programs include a primary source toolkit project for teachers and students, a museum/Clinton Presidential Library joint project, that allows students to study official documents, letters, photos and other materials as they learn about key events in the country's history.

Dunn said a museum goal is to become a national educational resource on issues related to the Constitution, representative democracy and the role of the marshals in law enforcement.